Thimble Summer (5 page)

Donald's sun-suit was black where he had sat down in the mud. He carried a little fishing rod over his shoulder, but he had no fish.

“And no wonder,” said their mother. “He was so busy pulling up the hook to see if there was anything on it that the fish didn't have time to bite.”

“Next time I will take a gun and shoot them dead,” said Donald darkly; and he banged and boomed at the top of his lungs all the way up to the house.

After supper Jay and Garnet said good-bye to their mother, and with their father got into the Ford car which had been in the family since Jay was a baby; it was very high and narrow and elderly looking. Riding in it was rather like being on a throne, and rather like being in a motor boat. It rattled and chugged along the road at fifteen miles an hour, and sounded as if it were going fifty.

Both the children sat in the front seat with their father; picnic things, blankets and coats were piled in back.

The valley was filled with the blue color of dusk, and lamps in farmhouse windows burned with a clean white light.

There were hundreds of odors in the night air; Garnet raised her nose like a puppy to smell them all. Cabbages decaying richly in gardens made her hold her breath in passing; but the cornfields were wonderful, they had a special smell after dark that you never noticed in the daytime. It didn't smell like corn at all, but strange and spicy like incense in a church. Bouncing bet growing in ditches by the roadside gleamed pale in the dusk, and sent forth a sharp, sweet fragrance.

Garnet felt adventurous and happy. She had never spent a night away from home before, though Jay had been to Milwaukee twice and once to Chicago.

They turned from the highway along a rutted dirt road. The Ford thumped and jerked and quivered; in back the coffeepot's lid jingled like a tambourine. There were woods on either side of them now, and leaves meeting high above shut out the last of the light. Suddenly the air was close and dark.

Soon they saw the bright flicker of the kiln between trees. “Good!” said their father, “the fire has broken and this will be the last night I'll have to come here.”

They stopped at the edge of a clearing and got out. Mr. Freebody's old truck and the Hausers' newer one were parked near by.

The Hauser boys, Cicero and Merle, came running to meet them. Their faces were streaked with ash and they looked tired.

“Gee, we're glad to see you,” said Cicero. “It's been mighty hot up here all day. But she's done a good job for us this time.”

They got into the truck and called good night.

Garnet stared fascinated at the kiln. The huge oven, open at the top, was crowned with flames of white and purple, and the iron door was red-hot, and glowing like the eye of a dragon.

“See, Garnet,” explained her father, “when the fire has reached its hottest pitch and the limestone in the oven is thoroughly cooked, the flame comes out of the top like that. That's what we mean when we say it's broken through.”

Mr. Freebody was sitting on a log reading a paper. He was a small, quiet man with a big, fierce mustache which looked, even when he slept, as though it were awake and keeping watch. His dog, Major, lay dozing at his feet, twitching as he chased imaginary rabbits.

Every ten or fifteen minutes the two men slid open the metal door with a piece of lead pipe; the clanging sound shattered all the dark gathered stillness of the woods. For a few moments you could look into the brilliant heart of the fire as Mr. Freebody and Mr. Linden, staggering a little, lifted the big logs to feed it.

Garnet was enjoying this. She spread the blankets under a large chokecherry tree some distance from the fire. She arranged the picnic things, hanging cups on the twigs of a bush, and burying potatoes in hot wood ash raked from the kiln.

Jay was busy too. He helped the men with the logs, and slid open the glowing door for them.

Now and then people from neighboring farms, who had seen the flaming kiln in the woods, came to watch and talk for a while. Henry Jones, the old stonemason, came too. He had lived in the valley for eighty years, and could still remember the boat with big sails that had brought him and his family across the sea from Liverpool. He could remember, too, the wagon drawn by mules in which they had traveled to this valley where his father had settled. His father had taught his trade to Henry, who grew up to be the best stonemason in the county. But now he was very old. He sat on a tree stump half asleep and watched the kiln's bright crown.

“Seems like I've seen a thousand of them things burning in my life,” he told Garnet.

By-and-by as it grew late, the people went away and just the four of them were left. Five, if you counted Major.

Garnet sat on a blanket under the chokecherry tree and watched Jay and the two men refuelling the fire. Beyond this circle of light and sound the woods spread, seeming taller and more wild than in the day. How still it was! And yet not really still at all when she listened closely. There were dozens of sounds: hoots of owls, stirring of leaves, a whippoorwill in some distant swamp who talked and talked as if he could never stop. And everywhere, overhead, underfoot and in the air beside her, she heard insects making their tiny noises. But all these sounds together made a sort of stillness.

Garnet thought: “I will just lie down for a minute, but I won't go to sleep.”

Between feathery branches she watched the stars. Suddenly one of them shot across the sky with a tail of flame; she made a wish on it. And then in spite of herself her eyes closed and she slept.

The loud clattering of the kiln door wakened her. In the silence that followed she sat up and rubbed her eyes and heard the clock in the Blaiseville courthouse miles away ringing the hour. She counted the strikes; there were twelve of them — clear and perfect on the air. She had never been awake before to hear the clock strike twelve at night!

She got up, put coffee and water in the big pot and climbed the narrow path on the hillside to the top of the kiln. She set the pot on the coals as near the crown of flames as she could get.

When she came down she raked the potatoes out of the ash; they were well roasted now and their coats were black.

Jay had a beard of soot. “Gosh, I'm hungry,” he said.

“I am, too,” agreed Garnet. “I never ate a meal at midnight before.” Food should have a special taste at such an hour, she thought.

When the coffee was done she put it on a paper with the lopsided ham sandwiches. Nobody said much. They just sat in the flickering light and ate everything. There was hardly a crumb left.

When Garnet brought out the apple pie Mr. Freebody pretended to faint.

“More food!” he groaned. “I couldn't touch a mouth-full.” But he ate two slices just the same.

Afterwards Garnet settled down under the tree again. The dew was falling, and she pulled a blanket over her; it smelled faintly of frying for some reason, and of camphor. Her father and Mr. Freebody were talking in grown-up voices about things like politics and the price of feed; Jay, trying not to look sleepy, sat on a log in the firelight pretending to listen as he whittled a stick.

Suddenly Major growled. He had not made a sound all evening, and had behaved very well, only showing a natural anxiety about the ham sandwiches.

But now he stood staring into a dark thicket and growling with the hair rising on his neck. It was an ugly sound.

IV. The Stranger

“WHAT do you see, Major?” asked Mr. Freebody. “What is it, a skunk?”

They all looked towards the shadowy place that Major was watching so intently.

There was a sound then, of leaves stirring and twigs breaking. What could be coming out of these dark woods so late at night? Garnet felt gooseflesh all over her skin. For a minute she wished that she was at home, safe in her own bed.

Major's growl ended in a burst of terrified, defiant barking. He dashed forward and Mr. Freebody sprang to his feet as the bushes parted and someone emerged.

Garnet's racing heart turned over in relief. Why this was only a boy, hardly older than Jay, and certainly nobody to be afraid of.

“Be quiet, Major,” said Mr. Freebody. “Where do you come from, boy?” he asked the newcomer.

There was something the matter with the boy. He walked crookedly and suddenly lurched forward, half falling to the ground.

“Excuse me,” he said. Then he looked up at the surprised faces surrounding him and grinned.

“I smelled coffee. I bet it was a mile away! And I just followed my nose till I got here. Gee, and when I saw that oven of yours I thought the whole woods was on fire.” He licked his lips nervously. “Do you think — would it be all right — I mean could I have some coffee, please?”

Garnet didn't know that boys ever drank coffee but she ran to get him some.

“How long since you et, boy?” she heard Mr. Freebody asking.

And she heard the reply: “Day before yesterday.”

“My gosh!” said Jay's horrified voice at her elbow. “Two days! Give him some pie for Pete's sake. And aren't there any sandwiches left?”

“You ate four of them yourself, if you think back,” Garnet reminded him. “And Major cleaned up the crumbs. But he can have some potatoes and a slice of pie, anyway.”

Jay was shaking his head. “Gee whiz! Two whole days without anything to eat!” He couldn't imagine such a thing; he who had always thought three meals a day about half as many as a person needed.

The boy ate everything that was offered him and drank the strong black coffee eagerly. When he had finished he smiled again. “I guess I'll live now.”

Garnet's father began asking questions. “How old are you?” he said.

“Thirteen,” answered the boy, “but I pass for fifteen when I want to.”

“What are you doing in these woods at this time of night?” asked her father.

“Yes, and where do you come from? I never seen you before,” added Mr. Freebody sternly.

“I was hitchhiking,” said the boy. “This afternoon I couldn't get a ride on anything but a hay wagon. I was kind of dizzy from being hungry, I guess, and the hay was so swell and soft that I went to sleep and woke up way off in the backwoods somewhere. The fellow had unhitched the team in the barn and forgotten all about me. Well, it was night by that time, and when I knocked at the door of this fellow's house, I woke him up and he was kind of sore, so I didn't ask him for anything to eat. He told me to cut through the woods and I'd get back to the highway. I thought maybe I could hop a ride on a truck; there are lots of them on the road at night. But I got lost, and then I smelled coffee and all I could think of was getting to the place where the smell came from.”

“Have more,” said Garnet.

“No thanks,” said the boy. “I ought to be getting along. I want to catch a truck. Thanks a lot for the food.” He stood up.

“Just a minute,” said Garnet's father. “I think perhaps you'd better tell us a little more about yourself first. Maybe we can help you.”

A shadow seemed to pass over the boy's face. You could see that he didn't want to talk about himself, but he sat down again.